


Begoggled

by interestingword



Series: Refuge lore [1]
Category: Flight Rising
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-23 06:25:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9644327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interestingword/pseuds/interestingword
Summary: Begoggled is the birdskull leader, and blackened are his lenses.





	

**Author's Note:**

> alternative title: "it's been almost three years and Sting is only now publishing lore for their progen"
> 
> sting needs to get their heckin act together tbh

He's just a hatchling now, with a twin, a twin who is wonderful and strange and everything he wants to be and more. They make plans together. They want to grow up with each other, raise their own hatchlings side-by-side, rule over a lair as equals and each have the other's back until their dying breaths. Weeks are spent planning their great escape from their clan so as to gain a fresh start in the world, but blood fills the water, and Jectoma is left to shout for help aside a reddened river.

He's a teenager, and his brother is too injured to earn his keep within the clan. The cart's wheels are squeaky as he is taken to another time, another place, and screams fill the air as they beg not to be separated. But the cart has room for one. That one is not him. Years go by, and the wound is still fresh when he awakens aside the empty bed.

He's a young adult, and he has felt the calling of the Gods. To the Plaguebringer he offers his services, and to his honor she accepts. The ranks soon form to his wishes, and many battles are fought and won by his reckoning force in the years to come. Only once does he falter in his conquest. One time, and it brought him punishment, but still he clings to the scrap of memory of a face identical to his own. Yet the eyes. Yet the eyes.

He is a weathered soldier, and he wishes to live his life in peace. Too many have died beneath his claws. No, he seeks to help, to heal, to be a beacon of hope and safety in a barren wasteland. So he goes, and asks, and no sooner does he put forth the request than it is approved. Another will accompany him, and the two shall spread their Goddess' word through the world beneath.

He is lost. Chia, his travelling partner, is also lost. This is the only trait they share. Memories gone, genes wiped, they know only that their purpose is to persist in the broad territory they have been dropped into, and to seek out the others with similar goals. One comes almost immediately, Shiluga, of white eyes and feathers brighter than Jectoma thought could be. Her looks are sly and her claws more so, but she offers to work, and who is he to decline? So there they are, this trio three, lost and alone but alone together.

He finds a skeleton, jutting from the soft ground of the Boneyard, of a fallen giant perished here a millennia prior. In a flurry of excitement he scrambles up the tallest rib and peers down, left, right, back. The view is breathtaking. The glory of his goddess' kingdom sprawls in every direction for as far as his four eyes can see and more, and even better is the cave entrance just a few lengths away. Home, he decides. Home.

The digging takes a while, but it is well worth it. Only after the first few newcomers does he realize that every home needs a name, and a few ideas are tossed around before one is settled upon. A fitting one. A Refuge of Skeletons. They carve it into the ribs of the beast, and it would last decades before wearing off into smooth bone.

He has a friend now, Laramis. Laramis of the green eyes and the pink skin and all the wrong scents yet so _right_. They bond fast despite their differences, and for a while it is as if they were brothers. A memory stirs, shifting in the mirror's back mind, but it does not awake. Instead he laughs and drinks merrily, and welcomes newcomers with open wings to the Refuge he has made.

He has few memories from the next years. Two eggs meant to die survived, becoming fierce daughters and fiercer warriors. Tangles upon tangles of spirals infested every corner of the lair from top to bottom, accompanied by guardians and wildclaws and the occasional fluff of a tundra. Skydancers were the rarest that he knew, and their five sets of eyes stared beadily from the shadows at his throne.

He is king. Barely. The attack from the inside killed several, no good friends included, but his victory was not one of the casualties. Shiluga's shackles weigh heavily on his mind as a serpent gnaws, whispering in that wheedling tone that _what if she had allies? what if she had succeeded? what if it happens again and what if you lose and what if your friends were behind it and what if_

He is alone. His partner no longer fit, and that left but one solution. After all, everything ends sometime. 

He is confused. A hatchling arrived, left on their doorstep, bearing colors oddly similar to his own. No genes adorn his skin, nor are the eyes a noble crimson, yet something resonates within him with every glance. Jectoma does not return to the nesting site. 

He is concerned. The hatchling has grown to a teen, and murmurs tales of battle to his peers that will listen. He weaves stories of betrayal and family and heartbreak and brothers, and it is all too familiar yet nothing he recalls. Tension rises in the tunnels, and he fears another grapple is at hand. Preparations begin. Preparations, he reflects, should never be needed.

He was right. The mirrored mirror had spread his words through the lair like parasitic tendrils, taking root and usurping all order within the world. The tunnels have flipped topsy turvy and no longer is he fighting just one, but many, the many he thought to be friends just days before. Battle has not occurred, but each side knows that it is only a matter of time before conflict. And with that knowledge, they wait.

He is desperate, grasping at every alliance like a child with string. Many slip through his claws. Some do not. Those are the unlucky ones, the ones who must stay out of obligation rather than free will. He knows this. He knows this, knows that his time has run its course, but still he clings to it like a lifeboat. If he can only hang on through this time, whispers his determination, and then the next, and then the next, and then the next.

He realizes the irony only now. A refuge that is a warzone, a haven that is anything but. Those who came for protection now flee for the same reason, escaping the tyrannical rule of one whose existence should not be. He wants to explain, to tell them that it should not be like this, that he's sorry, but it is too late. Two years, and all that he has built is gone.

Words clash frequently, until they don't.

He is not quite dead, not yet, but he wishes he was. His brother's claws rake his flank and wings and mask again and again and again, unrelenting in their unjust rage. He does not remember, Jectoma whispers, but it falls upon closed ears. Another hit. Again. In truth, he does remember. He remembers the river and the loss and the life and the wars and all of it, but he remembers most of all a brother. This is not that brother. Another hit. Another hit. Another.

He watches his word crumble around him. The fae would know what to do, he decides, pausing in the rubble that once was Sentry's Stretch. The fae should be here. But she is not here, and he is not there, and the problem facing them all is not solvable with lamentation. So with heavy heart and heavy wings he moves on, searching for the broken bodies of those who once called him leader. Someday, he hopes, she will return.

He is awed at how easy it was. A bribe and a traitor to take down a regime. It should be a proud moment, but it is not. Too many faces are absent from the lair for it to be anything but a glorified funeral, and silently the foes and friends alike disperse as if the past three years were nothing. It was not nothing. Still the scars will last for years, decades, a century or more. Life is a fleeting thing in their boneyard home, but however long it may last, the memories of this will persist alongside. 

He almost wishes for more fighting. The constant adrenaline fled alongside the tension, and without that feeling Jectoma does not know what more to do. Lament, perhaps. Sleep. Struggle through day after day after day until his miserable body finally gives out. 

He ponders, knowing full well that he should not have survived the turmoil. Nothing should have. Every flick of his miserable tail against the stone brings new self-pity, and he sits for hours thinking of all the ways he could have died. The ways he _should_ have died.

He is standing in a pool of blood, scraps of scales scattered around him. The ground is slippery and crimson. He does not react. These visions do not shock him as they used to, they are far too commonplace now, but he cannot help wondering whether someday his boredom will come at the cost of another's life. It is this, and only this, that incites a spark of mild inquiry in the back of his mind. He does not want it to be answered.

He is a tortoise in a hare's world, adapting to one thing while another twenty come about. As a child of the Plague, this is a shameful burden. As a leader to a clan, it could spell death. There is no upside to this. There is no upside to anything, it seems.

He is not alone any longer. Red eyes and pale pale wings haunt the edges of his sight, vanishing when he turns to face them, and he knows in his heart that it will be his downfall.

He is covered in blood again, yet it is too dreamlike to be false. A distant whisper points out the irony, of realism being a sign of falsehood, but it is too far to process. Everything feels too far to process. Another voice behind him asks whether he's okay. Their two definitions vary too much to give a reliable answer, so he murmurs a mumble and hopes they do not question further. 

He replies with a soft tone, confusion clouding his eyes as he realizes that he doesn't know where Laramis is. Another question comes, asking what the records say, and he ambles away halfheartedly to check. Speech does not grace his throat for days after the discovery. 

He wanders the lair for a few weeks, exploring and looking for new places to get lost. The rule of his sliver of the territory is in the hands of one far more capable than he anyway, as it has been for months, and few seem to notice his leaving. The handful that do, keep walking, eyes lowered and gazes conveniently drawn to the wall next to them. Jectoma pretends not to see.

It feels like the world will pitch sideways if he stops focusing. Like at any given moment, a lapse in thought will leave the lair to twist and send everything tumbling down and down and down and down and down as if gravity suddenly rebelled. They give him funny looks, but that is only because they don't realize the enormous favor he's doing them. If it wasn't for him, they'd all be dead, yes? Nobody answers, but they do look far more concerned when he passes them in the tunnels.

He turns a corner and finds a ghost.

The scarlet eyes and coral crest are unmistakable and simultaneously unreal. The pair stare quizzically at each other for a moment, puzzled, each wondering why the other is present. Slowly, then, the fae moves back. Like a whisper she retreats, murmuring an apology before turning tail and fleeing. Jectoma sits for hours pondering the encounter, whether it was real, what it meant. He knew of rumors that other founders were returning, but surely his partner did not seek to come? And if she did, why would she leave? The questions haunt him far longer than the visions do.

He finds himself perched upon the rib again, watching the bustle beneath. What once was an abandoned dirt patch is now an anthill of flurrying motion. A dragon alights aside him, a phantom. He does not turn. They do not speak. And it is as if, if only for a little while, there is peace made between the pair at last.


End file.
